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Graciously offering up some black trauma porn with dinner, a Republican Women's Club in Kentucky just hosted a book promo at a local restaurant for Jon Mattingly, one of the Louisville police officers who helped murder Breonna Taylor in her bed, to tell "his side" of a story that they claim "has been twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline.” They also broadcast the "snuff by cop" audio and video on public speakers so all the patrons could hear. So thoughtful. Up next: Postcards of the lynching.
A black, 26-year-old emergency room technician in Louisville, Taylor was asleep in bed with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker around midnight on March 13, 2020 when plainclothes police officers pounded on their door as part of a drug raid mistakenly targeting her long-ex-boyfriend. After breaking down the door with a battering ram, at least seven cops burst into the apartment without identifying themselves; Walker, thinking they were intruders, fired a warning shot (from a licensed gun) that hit Mattingly in the leg. Police opened fire with at least 32 shots; Taylor was hit by six bullets and died. In the media, the murder of a loving, productive, entirely innocent black woman came to be routinely called "a botched raid." More accurately, it was a racist, bloody clusterfuck, born of already-contentious no-knock warrants, that just kept getting worse.
The local Courier Journal had to sue to get the investigative report from Louisville police, who refused to release it. Months later, when they did, it was a four-page, almost blank report: It lists the time, date, case number, victim's name. It checks "no" to forced entry. Though she was shot at least eight times and died in a pool of blood on her hallway floor, it lists her injuries as "none." It names the three Louisville officers who fired shots - Jon Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison, all white and in their 40s - but omits the vital narrative of what happened except for the word "investigation." The Journal editor's response: "Are you kidding?" Activist Hannah Drake called the report a slap in the face to all black women." "This document is proof that LMPD continues to make a mockery of transparency," she said. "This is the best they could offer Breonna, even in her death."
It got still worse when a grand jury declined to charge police for killlng Taylor, sparking widespread protests. They found Mattingly and Cosgrove, whose shots killed Taylor, acted "in self-defense," then bafflingly charged Hankison with three counts of "wanton endangerment" - one savage headline: "Cop Charged With 'Whoopsie' - for firing shots that passed into an adjoining apartment and displaying "an extreme indifference to the value of human life." It's unclear what they thought Mattingly's and Cosgrove's "wanton murder" displayed, but Hankison was acquitted. The DOJ charged four cops with federal civil rights offenses, falsifying the search warrant; two still face trials. The city also settled two lawsuits, paying $12 million to Breonna's mother Tamika Palmer and $2 million to Kenneth Walker; because the police's superpower remains shamelessness, he was initially charged with attempted murder of a cop, but protests, also reality, led to charges being dropped.
Fortuitously inhabiting a country where, notes Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy" - both of which have long fallen disproportionately on black bodies - Mattingly has thus been free to retire from the Police Department, write a "tell-all" book about the raid in which he whines about "the woke mob," and rebrand-himself, Kyle-Rittenhouse-like, as a conservative speaker whose sole dubious qualification is having a barbarous hand in killing Breonna Taylor. In his grievance-laden book, Mattingly says he wants his story "to make a difference. "I want society to stop insisting on someone to blame for every crisis and tragedy," he writes. "I don’t want another Breonna Taylor or another John Mattingly.” By unfathomably equating his fate with hers, notes one sage, he indisputably proves once and for all that "white victimhood is so powerful it can leap a locomotive in a single bound."
His hosts for last week's dinner-with-black-trauma-on-the-side were Republican Women of South Central Kentucky eager to let a killer cop tell "his side" of the story, evidently forgetting the other "side" is, regrettably, dead. In a now-deleted Facebook post, they dutifully parroted Mattingly' paranoid cop cant: He would “share what really happened... what he saw, and how the media’s narrative has been corrupted and twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline.” Still, not everyone was there for it, even in deep-red Kentucky. He was originally scheduled to speak at the Bowling Green Country Club with a GOP gubernatorial candidate, but they backed out after a ripple of outrage appeared. Much of it echoed that of Kentucky Democratic Chair Colmon Elridge, who, citing the evening's price tag, termed "abhorrent" the right's ongoing fetish of lionizing those who kill innocent black people, "from Till to Taylor...Apparently the worth of a murdered innocent Black woman is a country club dinner at $40 per person, tax and tip included."
For black viewers or listeners, of course, it also presents one more ugly example of the right's persistent celebration of black death at the hands of police - and, as an inevitable result, the belittling and diminishing of black lives. "It's already traumatizing that we are bombarded by these images...constantly coming up against these little snuff films where Black lives are ended," writes Toure in The Grio. He cites "searing" images of scores of black killings "we can call up at any time...We can see, in our mind’s eye, so many killings....Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice...We see the footage in our minds....We carry that around with us all the time." The impact of that baggage is "surely corrosive," he writes, never mind when it's used to make a tawdry buck to sell a shitty book. For many critics, the whole vile debacle - Breonna's murder, the justice she didn't get, her free killers resurfacing to hawk their plaints and wares while glad crowds applaud them - summon nothing so much as the American lynchings so many modern Black killings are likened to.
There were, of course, thousands through the 19th and into the 20th century; many featured making a buck on the horrors. On August 7, 1930, a white mob broke into a Marion, Indiana jail to lynch three young black men wrongly accused of murdering a white man and raping a white woman.Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, both 19, were beaten and tortured, then hung from trees as a crowd of thousands gathered; James Cameron, 16, survived. When the bodies were cut down, people rushed to take parts as souvenirs, and photos were later bought and sold as postcards. On May 25, 1911, Laura Nelson and her teenage son L.D., both black, were kidnapped from an Oklahoma jail and hung from a bridge, where hundreds came to see; more photos as postcards. On June 15, 1920, a white mob of up to 10,000 stormed a jail in Duluth, Minn. holding six black circus workers falsely accused of rape; the crowd got to three - Isaac McGhie, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson - and beat and hanged them. More postcards. Warning: very graphic photo here.
Jon Mattingly, meanwhile, had a swell time re-living his lynching for profit; afterwards, he posted on Facebook, "Food was amazing and staff was even better!" Commenters were appalled: "What a vulture...And great entertainment too! How fun for you!...You are a murderer...Everything you put in your mouth will turn to ash...Shame shame shame..." and, after admitting it was maybe "a mistake" to broadcast his spiel, "You seem to make a lot of mistakes. Good thing you didn't make the mistake of being a black woman sleeping in her own home." Astonishingly - or not (see shameless) - he angrily argued with "all of you slamming a good man." The GOP ladies defended themselves too: The event was "taken out of context," Mattingly is "also a victim," none of them "are racist," and "other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization." Yes, well. Kenneth Walker is still "deeply traumatized" and Breonna Taylor is still dead, murdered in her own bed, so neither is available.
Postscript: Witnessing that Duluth lynching was an 8-year-old immigrant boy named Abraham Zimmerman. Long afterward, he evidently described it to his son Robert, who was born 21 years later. Or maybe Robert, a curious, precocious boy who became Bob Dylan, learned about it on his own, found some of those photo postcards in the old junk stores he loved to explore his entire life. In any case, when Dylan came to write what's been deemed the sixth greatest song of all time - and some of us might put it higher - he bitterly recalled the photos, marking America's own, profane "chimes of freedom," to begin Desolation Row:
They're selling postcards of the hanging,
They're painting the passports brown,
The beauty parlor's filled with sailors,
The circus is in town.
Political revenge. Mass deportations. Project 2025. Unfathomable corruption. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Pardons for insurrectionists. An all-out assault on democracy. Republicans in Congress are scrambling to give Trump broad new powers to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit he doesn’t like by declaring it a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Trump has already begun filing lawsuits against news outlets that criticize him. At Common Dreams, we won’t back down, but we must get ready for whatever Trump and his thugs throw at us. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. By donating today, please help us fight the dangers of a second Trump presidency. |
Graciously offering up some black trauma porn with dinner, a Republican Women's Club in Kentucky just hosted a book promo at a local restaurant for Jon Mattingly, one of the Louisville police officers who helped murder Breonna Taylor in her bed, to tell "his side" of a story that they claim "has been twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline.” They also broadcast the "snuff by cop" audio and video on public speakers so all the patrons could hear. So thoughtful. Up next: Postcards of the lynching.
A black, 26-year-old emergency room technician in Louisville, Taylor was asleep in bed with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker around midnight on March 13, 2020 when plainclothes police officers pounded on their door as part of a drug raid mistakenly targeting her long-ex-boyfriend. After breaking down the door with a battering ram, at least seven cops burst into the apartment without identifying themselves; Walker, thinking they were intruders, fired a warning shot (from a licensed gun) that hit Mattingly in the leg. Police opened fire with at least 32 shots; Taylor was hit by six bullets and died. In the media, the murder of a loving, productive, entirely innocent black woman came to be routinely called "a botched raid." More accurately, it was a racist, bloody clusterfuck, born of already-contentious no-knock warrants, that just kept getting worse.
The local Courier Journal had to sue to get the investigative report from Louisville police, who refused to release it. Months later, when they did, it was a four-page, almost blank report: It lists the time, date, case number, victim's name. It checks "no" to forced entry. Though she was shot at least eight times and died in a pool of blood on her hallway floor, it lists her injuries as "none." It names the three Louisville officers who fired shots - Jon Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison, all white and in their 40s - but omits the vital narrative of what happened except for the word "investigation." The Journal editor's response: "Are you kidding?" Activist Hannah Drake called the report a slap in the face to all black women." "This document is proof that LMPD continues to make a mockery of transparency," she said. "This is the best they could offer Breonna, even in her death."
It got still worse when a grand jury declined to charge police for killlng Taylor, sparking widespread protests. They found Mattingly and Cosgrove, whose shots killed Taylor, acted "in self-defense," then bafflingly charged Hankison with three counts of "wanton endangerment" - one savage headline: "Cop Charged With 'Whoopsie' - for firing shots that passed into an adjoining apartment and displaying "an extreme indifference to the value of human life." It's unclear what they thought Mattingly's and Cosgrove's "wanton murder" displayed, but Hankison was acquitted. The DOJ charged four cops with federal civil rights offenses, falsifying the search warrant; two still face trials. The city also settled two lawsuits, paying $12 million to Breonna's mother Tamika Palmer and $2 million to Kenneth Walker; because the police's superpower remains shamelessness, he was initially charged with attempted murder of a cop, but protests, also reality, led to charges being dropped.
Fortuitously inhabiting a country where, notes Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy" - both of which have long fallen disproportionately on black bodies - Mattingly has thus been free to retire from the Police Department, write a "tell-all" book about the raid in which he whines about "the woke mob," and rebrand-himself, Kyle-Rittenhouse-like, as a conservative speaker whose sole dubious qualification is having a barbarous hand in killing Breonna Taylor. In his grievance-laden book, Mattingly says he wants his story "to make a difference. "I want society to stop insisting on someone to blame for every crisis and tragedy," he writes. "I don’t want another Breonna Taylor or another John Mattingly.” By unfathomably equating his fate with hers, notes one sage, he indisputably proves once and for all that "white victimhood is so powerful it can leap a locomotive in a single bound."
His hosts for last week's dinner-with-black-trauma-on-the-side were Republican Women of South Central Kentucky eager to let a killer cop tell "his side" of the story, evidently forgetting the other "side" is, regrettably, dead. In a now-deleted Facebook post, they dutifully parroted Mattingly' paranoid cop cant: He would “share what really happened... what he saw, and how the media’s narrative has been corrupted and twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline.” Still, not everyone was there for it, even in deep-red Kentucky. He was originally scheduled to speak at the Bowling Green Country Club with a GOP gubernatorial candidate, but they backed out after a ripple of outrage appeared. Much of it echoed that of Kentucky Democratic Chair Colmon Elridge, who, citing the evening's price tag, termed "abhorrent" the right's ongoing fetish of lionizing those who kill innocent black people, "from Till to Taylor...Apparently the worth of a murdered innocent Black woman is a country club dinner at $40 per person, tax and tip included."
For black viewers or listeners, of course, it also presents one more ugly example of the right's persistent celebration of black death at the hands of police - and, as an inevitable result, the belittling and diminishing of black lives. "It's already traumatizing that we are bombarded by these images...constantly coming up against these little snuff films where Black lives are ended," writes Toure in The Grio. He cites "searing" images of scores of black killings "we can call up at any time...We can see, in our mind’s eye, so many killings....Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice...We see the footage in our minds....We carry that around with us all the time." The impact of that baggage is "surely corrosive," he writes, never mind when it's used to make a tawdry buck to sell a shitty book. For many critics, the whole vile debacle - Breonna's murder, the justice she didn't get, her free killers resurfacing to hawk their plaints and wares while glad crowds applaud them - summon nothing so much as the American lynchings so many modern Black killings are likened to.
There were, of course, thousands through the 19th and into the 20th century; many featured making a buck on the horrors. On August 7, 1930, a white mob broke into a Marion, Indiana jail to lynch three young black men wrongly accused of murdering a white man and raping a white woman.Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, both 19, were beaten and tortured, then hung from trees as a crowd of thousands gathered; James Cameron, 16, survived. When the bodies were cut down, people rushed to take parts as souvenirs, and photos were later bought and sold as postcards. On May 25, 1911, Laura Nelson and her teenage son L.D., both black, were kidnapped from an Oklahoma jail and hung from a bridge, where hundreds came to see; more photos as postcards. On June 15, 1920, a white mob of up to 10,000 stormed a jail in Duluth, Minn. holding six black circus workers falsely accused of rape; the crowd got to three - Isaac McGhie, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson - and beat and hanged them. More postcards. Warning: very graphic photo here.
Jon Mattingly, meanwhile, had a swell time re-living his lynching for profit; afterwards, he posted on Facebook, "Food was amazing and staff was even better!" Commenters were appalled: "What a vulture...And great entertainment too! How fun for you!...You are a murderer...Everything you put in your mouth will turn to ash...Shame shame shame..." and, after admitting it was maybe "a mistake" to broadcast his spiel, "You seem to make a lot of mistakes. Good thing you didn't make the mistake of being a black woman sleeping in her own home." Astonishingly - or not (see shameless) - he angrily argued with "all of you slamming a good man." The GOP ladies defended themselves too: The event was "taken out of context," Mattingly is "also a victim," none of them "are racist," and "other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization." Yes, well. Kenneth Walker is still "deeply traumatized" and Breonna Taylor is still dead, murdered in her own bed, so neither is available.
Postscript: Witnessing that Duluth lynching was an 8-year-old immigrant boy named Abraham Zimmerman. Long afterward, he evidently described it to his son Robert, who was born 21 years later. Or maybe Robert, a curious, precocious boy who became Bob Dylan, learned about it on his own, found some of those photo postcards in the old junk stores he loved to explore his entire life. In any case, when Dylan came to write what's been deemed the sixth greatest song of all time - and some of us might put it higher - he bitterly recalled the photos, marking America's own, profane "chimes of freedom," to begin Desolation Row:
They're selling postcards of the hanging,
They're painting the passports brown,
The beauty parlor's filled with sailors,
The circus is in town.
Graciously offering up some black trauma porn with dinner, a Republican Women's Club in Kentucky just hosted a book promo at a local restaurant for Jon Mattingly, one of the Louisville police officers who helped murder Breonna Taylor in her bed, to tell "his side" of a story that they claim "has been twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline.” They also broadcast the "snuff by cop" audio and video on public speakers so all the patrons could hear. So thoughtful. Up next: Postcards of the lynching.
A black, 26-year-old emergency room technician in Louisville, Taylor was asleep in bed with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker around midnight on March 13, 2020 when plainclothes police officers pounded on their door as part of a drug raid mistakenly targeting her long-ex-boyfriend. After breaking down the door with a battering ram, at least seven cops burst into the apartment without identifying themselves; Walker, thinking they were intruders, fired a warning shot (from a licensed gun) that hit Mattingly in the leg. Police opened fire with at least 32 shots; Taylor was hit by six bullets and died. In the media, the murder of a loving, productive, entirely innocent black woman came to be routinely called "a botched raid." More accurately, it was a racist, bloody clusterfuck, born of already-contentious no-knock warrants, that just kept getting worse.
The local Courier Journal had to sue to get the investigative report from Louisville police, who refused to release it. Months later, when they did, it was a four-page, almost blank report: It lists the time, date, case number, victim's name. It checks "no" to forced entry. Though she was shot at least eight times and died in a pool of blood on her hallway floor, it lists her injuries as "none." It names the three Louisville officers who fired shots - Jon Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison, all white and in their 40s - but omits the vital narrative of what happened except for the word "investigation." The Journal editor's response: "Are you kidding?" Activist Hannah Drake called the report a slap in the face to all black women." "This document is proof that LMPD continues to make a mockery of transparency," she said. "This is the best they could offer Breonna, even in her death."
It got still worse when a grand jury declined to charge police for killlng Taylor, sparking widespread protests. They found Mattingly and Cosgrove, whose shots killed Taylor, acted "in self-defense," then bafflingly charged Hankison with three counts of "wanton endangerment" - one savage headline: "Cop Charged With 'Whoopsie' - for firing shots that passed into an adjoining apartment and displaying "an extreme indifference to the value of human life." It's unclear what they thought Mattingly's and Cosgrove's "wanton murder" displayed, but Hankison was acquitted. The DOJ charged four cops with federal civil rights offenses, falsifying the search warrant; two still face trials. The city also settled two lawsuits, paying $12 million to Breonna's mother Tamika Palmer and $2 million to Kenneth Walker; because the police's superpower remains shamelessness, he was initially charged with attempted murder of a cop, but protests, also reality, led to charges being dropped.
Fortuitously inhabiting a country where, notes Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy" - both of which have long fallen disproportionately on black bodies - Mattingly has thus been free to retire from the Police Department, write a "tell-all" book about the raid in which he whines about "the woke mob," and rebrand-himself, Kyle-Rittenhouse-like, as a conservative speaker whose sole dubious qualification is having a barbarous hand in killing Breonna Taylor. In his grievance-laden book, Mattingly says he wants his story "to make a difference. "I want society to stop insisting on someone to blame for every crisis and tragedy," he writes. "I don’t want another Breonna Taylor or another John Mattingly.” By unfathomably equating his fate with hers, notes one sage, he indisputably proves once and for all that "white victimhood is so powerful it can leap a locomotive in a single bound."
His hosts for last week's dinner-with-black-trauma-on-the-side were Republican Women of South Central Kentucky eager to let a killer cop tell "his side" of the story, evidently forgetting the other "side" is, regrettably, dead. In a now-deleted Facebook post, they dutifully parroted Mattingly' paranoid cop cant: He would “share what really happened... what he saw, and how the media’s narrative has been corrupted and twisted to fit into a false, woke storyline.” Still, not everyone was there for it, even in deep-red Kentucky. He was originally scheduled to speak at the Bowling Green Country Club with a GOP gubernatorial candidate, but they backed out after a ripple of outrage appeared. Much of it echoed that of Kentucky Democratic Chair Colmon Elridge, who, citing the evening's price tag, termed "abhorrent" the right's ongoing fetish of lionizing those who kill innocent black people, "from Till to Taylor...Apparently the worth of a murdered innocent Black woman is a country club dinner at $40 per person, tax and tip included."
For black viewers or listeners, of course, it also presents one more ugly example of the right's persistent celebration of black death at the hands of police - and, as an inevitable result, the belittling and diminishing of black lives. "It's already traumatizing that we are bombarded by these images...constantly coming up against these little snuff films where Black lives are ended," writes Toure in The Grio. He cites "searing" images of scores of black killings "we can call up at any time...We can see, in our mind’s eye, so many killings....Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice...We see the footage in our minds....We carry that around with us all the time." The impact of that baggage is "surely corrosive," he writes, never mind when it's used to make a tawdry buck to sell a shitty book. For many critics, the whole vile debacle - Breonna's murder, the justice she didn't get, her free killers resurfacing to hawk their plaints and wares while glad crowds applaud them - summon nothing so much as the American lynchings so many modern Black killings are likened to.
There were, of course, thousands through the 19th and into the 20th century; many featured making a buck on the horrors. On August 7, 1930, a white mob broke into a Marion, Indiana jail to lynch three young black men wrongly accused of murdering a white man and raping a white woman.Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, both 19, were beaten and tortured, then hung from trees as a crowd of thousands gathered; James Cameron, 16, survived. When the bodies were cut down, people rushed to take parts as souvenirs, and photos were later bought and sold as postcards. On May 25, 1911, Laura Nelson and her teenage son L.D., both black, were kidnapped from an Oklahoma jail and hung from a bridge, where hundreds came to see; more photos as postcards. On June 15, 1920, a white mob of up to 10,000 stormed a jail in Duluth, Minn. holding six black circus workers falsely accused of rape; the crowd got to three - Isaac McGhie, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson - and beat and hanged them. More postcards. Warning: very graphic photo here.
Jon Mattingly, meanwhile, had a swell time re-living his lynching for profit; afterwards, he posted on Facebook, "Food was amazing and staff was even better!" Commenters were appalled: "What a vulture...And great entertainment too! How fun for you!...You are a murderer...Everything you put in your mouth will turn to ash...Shame shame shame..." and, after admitting it was maybe "a mistake" to broadcast his spiel, "You seem to make a lot of mistakes. Good thing you didn't make the mistake of being a black woman sleeping in her own home." Astonishingly - or not (see shameless) - he angrily argued with "all of you slamming a good man." The GOP ladies defended themselves too: The event was "taken out of context," Mattingly is "also a victim," none of them "are racist," and "other individuals with firsthand experience relating to this case are welcome to request an opportunity to speak to our organization." Yes, well. Kenneth Walker is still "deeply traumatized" and Breonna Taylor is still dead, murdered in her own bed, so neither is available.
Postscript: Witnessing that Duluth lynching was an 8-year-old immigrant boy named Abraham Zimmerman. Long afterward, he evidently described it to his son Robert, who was born 21 years later. Or maybe Robert, a curious, precocious boy who became Bob Dylan, learned about it on his own, found some of those photo postcards in the old junk stores he loved to explore his entire life. In any case, when Dylan came to write what's been deemed the sixth greatest song of all time - and some of us might put it higher - he bitterly recalled the photos, marking America's own, profane "chimes of freedom," to begin Desolation Row:
They're selling postcards of the hanging,
They're painting the passports brown,
The beauty parlor's filled with sailors,
The circus is in town.
"Officials in sane and scientific states must band together to report data on their own," said one journalist.
"The censorship begins," said one public health expert as the Trump administration directed federal health agencies to suspend all external communications, like those that have updated people across the U.S. in recent weeks amid outbreaks of Covid-19, influenza, and norovirus.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday evening that administration officials delivered the directive to staff members at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The agencies operate under the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), which President Donald Trump has nominated vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead. Kennedy has signaled that if confirmed he would purge the ranks of the FDA and change federal vaccine guidelines, including potentially limiting or eliminating the CDC's program that provides free immunizations to uninsured and underinsured children.
The pause on external communications will be in place for an indeterminate amount of time, according to the Post, and applies to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) compiled by the CDC. The epidemiological record includes "timely, reliable, authoritative, accurate, objective, and useful public health information and recommendations" for healthcare professionals and the public.
During the last year of Trump's first term, as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the country, HHS officials denounced the MMWR as "hit pieces on the administration" and pushed to delay and prevent the CDC from releasing new information about the pandemic that didn't align with the White House's views.
While changes to the operations and communications of federal health agencies after a new administration enters the White House are "not unprecedented," said epidemiologist Ali Khan, the MMWR "should never go dark."
The health agencies were instructed to halt communications about public health as the news media reported on a so-called "quad-demic" of four viruses that have been circulating for several weeks across the country.
CDC data shows that the spread of influenza A, Covid-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is "high" or "very high," and norovirus cases have been rising in recent weeks.
The country is also facing an "ongoing multi-state outbreak" of the H5N1 avian flu among dairy cattle, with 67 total human cases also reported during the current outbreak.
The CDC had been scheduled to publish three MMWR updates this week on H5N1 when the new directive was announced.
The Post reported that it was unclear whether the ban on external communications would apply to reports of new avian flu cases or foodborne illness outbreaks.
Journalist Jeff Jarvis said Trump's new policy will give way to "forced ignorance on health data" and called on officials "in sane and scientific states" to continue reporting public health information on their own.
The suspension of external communications will apply to website updates and social media posts, advisories that the CDC sends to clinicians about public health incidents, and data releases from the National Center for Health Statistics, according to the Post.
"Asking health agencies to pause all external communications is NOT typical protocol for administration changes," said Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University. "Generally website updates, disease case counts, and other typical day-to-day work continues."
Tran noted that during his first term, Trump officials halted external communications for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department.
"In their second term," he said, "they appear to be targeting health agencies too."
"Even if it turns out to be structured to avoid antitrust law enforcement, it plainly will concentrate power in a small number of corporate hands," said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday highlighted a new private-sector initiative to invest as much as $500 billion over four years into developing infrastructure to support artificial intelligence, starting with a raft of power-intensive data centers in Texas. The move drew swift criticism from one watchdog group on antitrust and environmental grounds.
The initiative, Stargate, is a joint venture of the tech firms OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank. Trump hosted the leaders of those companies—OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son—at the White House to announce the initiative just one day after he signed an executive order rolling back a Biden-era executive order implemented in 2023 that sought to put safeguards on AI.
"I think this will be the most important project of this era," said Altman, according to the Washington Post. "We wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr. President," he added, though both the Post and and the Associated Press noted that the creation of the partnership predated Trump's return to the White House.
Biden's 2023 executive order on AI placed safety obligations on AI developers and called on federal agencies to examine the technology's risks. But Biden, too, was interested in boosting AI infrastructure development. Right before he departed, in early mid-January, Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to identify government sites that could be leased to private companies for the construction of AI data centers.
Environmental groups and tech advocacy groups have long advocated for greater safeguards on AI, pointing to the technology's potential impact on the climate emergency.
The average query in the AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT requires 10 times the amount of energy a Google search needs, and "in that difference lies a coming sea change in how the U.S., Europe, and the world at large will consume power—and how much that will cost," according to a 2024 analysis published by the investment firm Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs analysts believe that AI will represent about 19% of data center power demand by 2028.
AI infrastructure is also water intensive. Global AI demand is projected to require more water extraction in a year than the country of Denmark by 2027, according to one study.
"The alarming surge in these centers' energy demand is on track to extend the fossil fuel era... [and] it is already increasing costs for some consumers and threatens to bring about a larger affordability crisis, while lining the pockets of Big Tech billionaires," said Karen Orenstein, a director at the environmental group Friends of the Earth, following Biden's January executive order. "For the sake of our planet and its people, we need to rein in Big Tech and regulate AI," she said.
Meanwhile, the joint venture to build out AI infrastructure has also drawn scrutiny from one watchdog group over concerns of corporate concentration.
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said Wednesday that "the new Stargate plan—at minimum—raises massive antitrust concerns. Even if it turns out to be structured to avoid antitrust law enforcement, it plainly will concentrate power in a small number of corporate hands."
"Absent a commitment to bring on new, renewable energy to power an even greater spike in AI power demand, the Stargate build out threatens to worsen the rush to climate catastrophe and to drive up consumer electric bills," he added.
Another observer, Jeffrey Westling of the American Action Forum, remarked on the timing of the announcement.
"Interesting to wait to announce this until the Trump Admin. Assuming its all private investment, maybe they were worried about FTC/DOJ antitrust scrutiny?" he wrote on X Tuesday.
"All around us, we see clear signs that the monster has become master."
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said during his address at an annual gathering of global elites on Wednesday that the world's addiction to fossil fuels has become an all-consuming "Frankenstein monster" imperiling hopes of a livable future.
"All around us, we see clear signs that the monster has become master. We just endured the hottest year and the hottest decade in history," Guterres said to the audience gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"A number of financial institutions and industries are backtracking on climate commitments," Guterres continued. "Here at Davos, I want to say loudly and clearly: It is short-sighted. And paradoxically, it is selfish and also self-defeating. You are on the wrong side of history. You are on the wrong side of science. And you are on the wrong side of consumers who are looking for more sustainability, not less. This warning certainly also applies to the fossil fuel industry and advertising, lobbying, and PR companies who are aiding, abetting, and greenwashing."
"Global heating is racing forward—we cannot afford to move backward," he added.
Guterres' remarks came as President Donald Trump, a fervent ally of the fossil fuel industry, took office in the U.S.—the largest historical emitter—and moved immediately to expand oil and gas production, which was already at record levels.
The U.S. is among a number of rich nations working to build out fossil fuel infrastructure and ramp up production in the face of runaway warming and worsening climate destruction across the globe.
Intensifying climate chaos—and global elites' disproportionate contributions to the planetary crisis—spurred several protests inside and near the Davos forum this week, with activists demanding higher taxes on the mega-rich and a rapid, just transition to renewable energy.
A climate protester calls for taxes on the rich during the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland on January 21, 2025. (Photo: Halil Sagirkaya/Anadolu via Getty Images)
"It is more than obvious that the super-rich must pay their fair share," Clara Thompson, a Greenpeace spokesperson in Davos, said earlier this week. "Especially when they are among the largest contributors to the climate crisis."
"It shouldn't be the people, already struggling to make ends meet, who have to foot the bill and suffer the consequences of worsening climate impacts," Thompson added. "The scarcity narrative is simply not true—there is enough money to fund a just and green future for all but it is just in the wrong pockets."